Global warming and the politics of fossil fuel

We’re not going to be able to transition to a non-fossil-fuel economy overnight, Fen Montaigne, senior editor of Yale Environment 360, said in an interview with OilPrice.com. But if you keep approving tar sands projects, or massive pipelines, or drilling in the Arctic, when does it stop?

By
James Stafford, Guest blogger /
June 26, 2013

Andy Wong/AP/File

(Read caption)
Smoke billows from a chimney of the cooling towers of a coal-fired power plant in Dadong, Shanxi province, China.

It’s not mere anecdotal evidence: Visibly melting sea ice is the best evidence that the planet is warming. So prospecting for oil in the Arctic is a tricky endeavor that must be undertaken slowly and with extreme caution, argues Fen Montaigne, senior editor of Yale Environment 360, author of “Fraser’s Penguins: A Journey to the Future in Antarctica” and other books, and contributor to National Geographic, The New Yorker and Smithsonian magazines.

So just how hot is it going to get? Hotter than we can handle if we fail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly, Montaigne tells us in an exclusive interview in which we discuss:

• Why prospectors should proceed with extreme caution in the Arctic• Just how hot it’s going to get with global warming• Why science is being side-lined in the climate change debate• Why oil companies will have to keep their assets in the ground• Why we need to rethink agricultural subsidies• What we can expect next from the volatile EV market• What really concerns environmentalists about natural gas• The great fossil fuels paradox• Why natural gas may not only be a bridge to the future, but the future itself• Why the US government has no business mandating ethanol